Early results with Agrii-Start Release in the maize crop of R. Gough and Son near Ludlow in Shropshire are showing promising early results.

With no starter fertiliser used and a crop nutrition approach based largely around the digestate produced from the business' AD plant, maximising forage yields as cost effectively as possible is a cornerstone of their business.

"Yield is all important for us," explains Richard Gough who has been growing maize to feed their 1.1 megawatt digester since 2013.

"Last year we grew 180ha of early maturing maize and establishing it reliably and ensuring it has adequate nutrition through to harvest can be a challenge in the increasingly variable conditions we now experience. 

"Making sure crops are drilled into adequate soil moisture is an essential starting point and sowing date is dictated by this and soil temperature, but we hope to be drilled up by the end of April and early May. It has been as late as June, however.

"From there on we rely on the digestate to deliver all the nutrition and we need to know every kg applied is working as hard as possible. We have used a small amount of ammonium nitrate in the past, but the organic sources do most of the hard work."

The Agrii-Start Release trials were carried out on 52ha of land as a single block chosen at random form the three blocks maize was grown on in 2025, recalls the farm's Agrii agronomist Ben Griffiths.

"With no synthetic fertiliser applied, the idea was to see how we could make best use of the phosphate (P) contained in the organic sources applied," he explains.

"Maize is typically grown in a system where organic manures provide the majority of nutrition and Agrii-Start Release has been shown to increase the availability of P from these sources as well as the soil, where reserves can remain locked up.

"It can also help reduce the risk of P indices rising to a level where organic manure cannot be applied."

The Release was applied with pre-emergence herbicide and the activator adjuvant Backrow on the 2nd of May at 4.0l/ha.

"Crops with the Agrii-Start Release applied looked strong throughout the season and coped with the difficult drought conditions well," Ben says.

"This was confirmed at harvest with the block of land that had product applied averaging 43.6t/ha with the rest of the maize producing 42.4t/ha - a 1.2t/ha improvement.

"It's early days, but these results are very promising so we are going to continue the trials next year on different land to see where we can finetune things to get even better nutrient utilisation and yield gains."